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What you need is a PV array 😃. Our last quarterly electric bill was £160 which I guess is due to the PVs and ST.

Fab place with a bit of land around it. I love this picture. to me it says. small hobbit person, with a huge shovel, loading a giant wheelbarrow that once full they will never be able to move. Over that low ledge is a cliff face with a sixty foot drop to the crashing waves below. Just reminds me of land of the giants. Having spent all of my summer holidays every year in Ireland, i though all of the houses were damp. All the ones i stayed in were. In the morning when there had been no fire lit, the bedclothes were always damp, and it was not because i had weed myself.

Worth a read.. https://www.neverpaintagain.co.uk/blog/roof-coatings-are-they-a-good-idea-or-not/ http://roofcoatingscam.com/will-roof-coating-invalidate-manufacturers-guarantee/

Afraid so. You need an MCS install to claim any sort of export payment.

Yes sorry it wasn't a loaded question I was simply after some hard data on how much PV power is generated by month so I could get a better idea of how much can be used at different times of the year

In the right circumstances and setting, trees are a perfectly fine resource for heating your home. My heating bills since June 2020 have been about £5. I have used that money each month to overpay on my mortgage and I should be mortgage free by the time I am 41. The majority of our firewood this year will come from coppicing and wind blown trees. I collect sticks during the course of year and already have my wood stored for next winter. No trees existed on our surrounding land 40 years ago and thousands exist now. It's not just the actual firewood which is important to us. Leaves are great for the compost and a lot of carbon can be captured through efficient biochar production. The biochar will provide goodness in our soil for many generations. This works for us in a unique situation and could for others in a rural setting.

Thanks, that's great - puts it into the something to think about later category and takes an item off the list for now!

We had good architect for our new build and a great builder. Builder told me he never builds off plans, he always builds off the last bit he's built 🙂 What he meant was he never trusts even himself so allways measures before buying anything.

Seems to be the average import. Generation tends to float between 3kWh on crap days and just over 10kWh on good. Just goes to show that even a chappy little system like that has an impact. I intend to cover the garage and sunroom Roofs when built and get batteries so should be around 10kWp plus once done.

Yeah I know, just teasing.

Hi All, I have just joined the forum after browsing for a solution to a few issues we have with our current extension. We live in a pair of Victorian farm workers cottages on the Suffolk coast. We bought them in 2014 when we fully gutted and renovated them, adding a large rear timber framed extension 12m wide with large glass doors. We did a lot of the work ourselves, and used considerate materials where we could. The floor is Limecrete throughout, and the walls are all hemp lined with Fermacell board, which gives us a fully breathable envelope for this solid walled property. We are in the midst of a second side extension, this time with a main contractor on board for the first phase. This build is two storey, timber framed with hempcrete sprayed insulation against hempblock lining to internal face of frame, total build up 300mm. To be clad in Larch similar to the first extension. We aim to get dry with help of contractor, and then take over a lot of the internal work ourselves to get finished over a longer period. I may post soon on a couple of issues we are facing. Best regards to all Tobias

4.2 [kJ/kg.K] x 210 [lt or kg] x (65 - 15) [delta °C] = 44,100 kJ Convert to kWh 44,100 [kJ] x 0.00027778 = 12.25 kWh So assuming your water delta T, difference between mains temperature and final temperature is a bit lower. About 37°C, before system losses.

oh ya we're blessed with the location. we're at a dead end as well so no through traffic or anything like that. peaceful spot. Clearly plenty of willing helpers there too! this house has only been used by relatives for a few weeks in the summer, every year since I can remember. I would imagine those early mornings were similarly damp as your experiences!

It's videos like this that make me really regret not pursuing architecture and landscape architecture when i was a kid, thanks for the link @Ferdinand!

just a few thoughts - cutlery and plates should be as near to the table as possible. Consider which stuff is needed close to which location(s) Floorplan design is pretty weird - why are room names & functions not marked - what is the line between the dining table and the sitting area? A wall? Curtain? - two doors into a bathroom is weird and cn make for awkward moments (although rare, I suppose). Might even be able to fit two bathrooms next to each other. - The top left room goes through the utility which ... is a compromomise, perhaps unavoidable but I'd try to work on it. - ASHP and plant is 40cm from the head of sleeping people. Avoidable? Make sure it's done properly and even then UFH pumps etc will be non-zero noise level. - Location of the window at the end of the horizontal walkway. Why not have a window at the end, sense of space FLoor2 Uneven windows on top (R4, R5 R6).. why? Window with slats in front? Somewhat curious.. but if you must? Will be very hard to clean.

@Carrerahill, @Mr Punter We really need to grow up, these are serious times.

It may be worth checking the ceiling for unusual staining.

It would have a bit daft for all 5 of the barns to buy a house without having a legal agreement in place for the water supply from the borehole so hopefully something is in place. Regardless of the situation with the farmer I’d be speaking with the other homeowners about drilling your own borehole and plant and splitting the cost between the houses. It wouldn’t be that expensive and you have more surety of supply. It’ll make the houses easier to sell too. If one of the houses has bacteria and the others don’t then it’s not the borehole causing that.

So he owns it, but what is the legal arrangement for him to supply them water? The only way I would be comfortable with this arrangement would be if there was an agreement, legally, for water to be supplied, perhaps a service charge for the water. Where we go on holiday the chap that owns several cottages and lodges owns the local water treatment plant, everyone connected pays him £120 a year for water. He uses that money for maintenance and upgrades. So assuming there is an agreement, what does it say? If the farmer has just kept the borehole and agreed to let people take water from if FOC and with no agreement, then what is to stop him stopping supply one day or like now, the new residents having no recourse when the borehole water becomes undrinkable... I would advise your friends to initially investigate the agreement in place. If there is nothing, I think they are snookered and will need to get water in themselves or talk to the farmer and pay for the borehole to be upgraded and agree a 100 year contract or something reasonable now and in the future on it. There might also be some mileage to be had speaking to the developer who converted/sold the conversions, surely building control signed this all off, so what was the proper arrangement?

Which also change depending on location in the country. I have single yellow lines. It should be either no parking, ever, or free for all parking. Not a mishmash of sometimes parking. Residence parking permits are a (expletive deleted)ing joke. Friends of mine clubbed together and got the council to issue them for their street. £3 admin charge back in the late 1990s. Now they pay £500 a year for each of their cars. Dopey will pillocks. It was their (the street's residence) cars blocking the street.

A few years ago it was common to park a car in the drive and another across the front.

Looking at that PDF I am assuming that the hips are too high. As you allude to, 300mm is not needed for flashing, 150mm but I have seen 75mm argued. So I can assume that actually the 300mm is because they are minus 150mm at the moment and to create 150mm they need 300mm... If someone thinks they need 300mm for flashing then, there is another issue here!

So, to get the flashing in, the roof had to come down 300mm - OK. So when it was all drawn, how did the roof sit in relation to the existing house and appear to work, is that the drawing you attached? Which dimension(s) are not the same on the plan as in real life. If it works on the drawing, but not in real life, then something must be different. Is the extension higher than planned? I so see, more often than not, ground level changes on site that screw things up. In fact, my own extension roof pitch had to change because what was drawn would only work if the ground level had been about 300mm lower than the drawing suggested. It did work on paper, but the ground level was not going to be taken that low or we would have created a low point all around our extension in relation to the rest of the garden/house which we didn't want.

Those notes seem pretty common, we have notes similar on our building services drawings. Designing something on CAD and then building it in real life often throws up differences, particularly where building extensions and changes exist and site measuring is critical. I would never order things like windows and doors off plan, if I did I would supply frames for brickys and framers to work to to ensure a good fit but even then, that would not save you in this situation. It is not critically clear what went wrong and why this needed to change, if there was an on site deviation brought about by a detail uncovered during the build then I would say the architect is not at fault, if the contractor varied something on site, then it is not the architects fault. The only time you could claim it was his error would be if clearly something was totally missing from the drawing and not considered. Clear up the whys and we might see a reason. Did the architect draw the house then get the structure designed? Perhaps SE came back and had to make something bigger or smaller somewhere to get something to work and this is the knock-on, but was the architect to update drawings? Sometimes they are off the job at that point and the onus is then on whoever manages it to catch the SE changes and then rework it or appoint architect to tweak design. I am going to suggest you cannot claim for the windows, he clearly states site measurements to be used. You might be able to get him to help you understand why it went wrong, and if he puts his hands up and say looks yes, this happened, then maybe he will knock something off your bill. It is so common for stuff to change on site, and often people just re-design around it, I spend as much as 1/3 of my time on redesign due to site changes beyond our control that I think it is pretty normal now.

Yes we have around 12Kwh of Solar Panels so we will also be having this device.

It's a private driveway owned by my neighbour to which we have a right of access and connection. Don't want to antagonise an already upset neighbour because of our build.

Mine is around 3 kWh/day, but I am all electric, so easy to monitor. Two things though. How much DHW do you actually use, you may find a minute les in the show helps more. Turning down the boiler flow temperature may affect the condensing efficiency of the boiler, that would need more investogation.

Oil price haven't got to levels they were at during the five years, 2010 to 2015. Think the issue is not the oil price, but processing capacity; as we out sourced most things (diesel and petrol) to other countries like Russia to make a CO2 emissions look good.

Only when you're trying to save money. When you're trying to ensure continuity of supply you need to store at any price.

It clearly was, but should no have been. That is a lot of rods and resistance . Next time it might be worth hiring a flexi rod as it will be easier to push. They are available with a transmitter and receiver, but at quite a cost.

If moss is a problem fitting copper strips at the ridge is an option, but I've never needed to do that, or clean a roof or get one "coated". I do recall hearing of cowboys on consumer programs that cold call and pressure sell you cleaning and coating work you probably don't need. I recall seeing one outfit clambering about on a roof waving a pressure washer about damaging tiles.

43% of our electricity generation came from gas in July. Half of that gas is imported. It’ll likely increase over the winter. This is partly driven by the state our nuclear power stations are in. We’ve committed to build more nuclear at enormous cost and generation is decades away. Our ability to store gas has also not been invested in so building up enough emergency storage for the winter isn’t easy either. It’s almost impossible to get planning permission in England for wind turbine farms. We could have had a lot more solar generation by now and what we are doing is at risk if Truss becomes PM and implements her moronic ideas. Renewables are relatively quick to build, relatively cheap to build, and the generation costs are relatively inexpensive. UK housing stock is some of the least efficient in Europe. Too cold in winter. Too hot in summer. Too expensive to run. The insulation incentives that were in place were badly thought through and poorly executed. We can all hope that the crisis will only extend to this winter. Maybe there will be a negotiated peace in Ukraine in the next 6 months. Maybe the price of energy will drop as a result. However, that seems like wishful thinking at the moment. But it does underline that our investment in renewable energy isn’t anywhere near as where it needs to be.

110 910 810 Are standard Structual openings 2100 and 2050 are standard heights I prefer 2100 as it matches window head heights and is easily reduced if need be Most places will stock doors and frames for the above sizes

Do you know what style doors you want, what finish, and whether they need to be FD rated or not. Figure that out first. Then look at suppliers and see what sizes such doors are commonly supplied in. Then allow for door linings and build your openings to suit. i did not do this, and found it very difficult to find the doors I wanted, which were mainly supplied in imperial sizes, to fit the metric sizes my architect had designed to.

You'll have a job making it draught free. Faced with a similar problem we sealed the garage from the rest of the house which is fine if you have no internal doors from the garage. Caulking round the ceiling plaster boarding and air seal tape did an acceptable job, with airtightness down to 0.6 ACH for the house.

Mermaid specified Everbuild Stixall Crystal Clear ( which is basically CT1 in a different tube from the smell of it ) for a 4x bathroom install I did where the clients went with Mermaid panels ( same 'glue' specified for both thin PVC and the Formica laminated wood alike ). Same product used to bed the bottom of the panels into / onto the shower / bath / floors etc, and PLEASE do not use the ghastly base trim they recommend, as it's a huge trap for water / grot etc and is completely unnecessary AFAIC. Also a horrible detail where it needs to stop short eg at the end of a fixed bath or shower tray.

We used the glue that the panel suppliers sold. Yeah, a few quid more but it was only a couple tubes and the joiner that fitted them said it was the stuff to use. Don't use screws!!!

If the batteries are AC coupled then they have the potential to feed into the grid in addition to the 6kw PV you have approval to export. If your batteries can push out 5kw and your PV push out 6kw then your DNO will want to assess you potential export as 11kw.

@Duncan62 Thanks for posting the plot. My comments having reread the above. 1 - Roof Your aesthetic is roughly 'Grand Designs Barn-style'. That's fine. But if that is your plan you need to think about maintaining that valley gutter. How will you deal with the heaps of leaves from all those lovely trees? I would suggest a top hung skylight onto the valley from the landing that you can get out of using an extendi-ladder - don't fit it where you fall down the stairs as well if you slip. That also means that your valley must be wide enough to walk in safely - which means 450 or so wide. IMO that roof form is complicated and expensive. However. I expect that with a convincing argument you could get a flat or a monopitch, or something higher, through - if that is what you want. Even a small number of feet could make a difference. Given the severe restrictions on your upstairs rooms, I would suggest considering an alternative form - perhaps a mansard or gambrel roof, perhaps in a vernacular style. Or even dormers for the smaller bedrooms. A mansard roof could easily give you rooms around 1m bigger in that dimension at head height, which would be transformative. 2 - Glad to see you have thought about the plot - great stuff. I would be inclined to move it a little more to the West on the plot, without compromising the garage or space to work - eg at the least you need space for future scaffolding between the house and garage. I say that because imo you want to maximise the garden space for more fun. I also note that the garden side is a potential plot for a nice retirement bungalow should you need - 8-9m width would be ample. You might prefer that to the potential grannexe when you hit 70-75. 3 - Front. It faces south, so I would make sure to get 2m high boundaries to give privacy - so you can sit or play on the S side, and for the veg garden. I think it needs a bit more drama, both to tease passersby, and to give a sense of occasion when someone comes to the door. I'm almost inclined to suggest a separate pedestrian gate. I would think about making the approach to the door more intriguing. 4 - You asked about getting light into the house. I think you have an issue with gloomy bedrooms on the N side plan above - perhaps with amount of light, but also with no sunlight. I would put a generous N-facing skylight in all the ones which touch the North side. I have these and they are gorgeous. A skylight lets in a *lot* more light than a window of the same size. With your roof pitch, there would be very little sun even in summer, and beautiful N-light all the time. With your valley I would consider skylights on the N-face of the front roof section, including a big one above the well, to get light into the landing. 5 - Flexibility for the future. Are you planning another sproglet? If it's twins, what will you do living in this house? 6 - Stairs. They don't look stairlift-able. That could bugger your detailed layout - iirc there are requirements for clear wall at the top and bottom (without looking it up). What are your regs? My suggestion would be to find somewhere to incorporate a proper future domestic lift. Should be possible, and they beat stairlifts to a cocked hat. Also stairs, make them generous in width and angle. My suggestion is 35 degrees and 1m wide. Stairs are one of the places, along with shower cubicles, and kitchen sinks and hobs, where a small amount of extra space makes the whole house feel luxurious. In the case of a stair angle, something shallower may give you an extra 5 years of ability to get upstairs comfortably. 7 - Grannexe. Another good thing you have thought about. I think you could improve the layout by treating the machine room as part of a cloaks / Jack-Jill loo / machine room combo - which might involve turning the bedroom around by 90 degrees. Remember to include the drains etc into the cloakroom so it can be a downstairs loo when the grannexe is activated. Can the cloaks and loo be side by side against the outside wall, so you get the soil drains by the edge? Does that matter? 8 - The bathrooms and plumbing seem to be quite spread out. Think a bit more about making it closer together, so that you get fewer water noises. eg Put the family bathroom next to the master, and swap with that mini-bedroom. And make sure the fittings do not back up against the master. And so on. The ideal is a single service core, but that is not always possible. 9 - Room layout. Yes, make the walls thinner, since it is tight on space. You have too many itty-bitty rooms upstairs. For the mini-study just in case the grannexe is required, you could leave that in one kid's bedroom such that it could be partitioned later - just need to think about placement of the extra door, two windows, skylights, heating and power sockets. (Will this decision have been made for you by 2-4 years when this is built?) You could do the same with the "store", but I think one of those is wise. I'm not sure about washing machines upstairs. Someone will know. 10 - Double beds. I would say work to 2m x 2m for the Master, and 2m x 1.75 for the others. Have just measured mine and these are the actual sizes. The important thing is what size *you* need. 1.9m x 1.4m is now pretty standard for student accommodation. That's me. Ferdinand

(Another of my favourite use cases is "where will the drum kit for your teenage child go?" or "where will trombone practice happen"?) For light penetration - it can be helpful just to *see* sunlight coming in in a corner rather than needing it everywhere. Here is a great interview with one of my favourite architects that touches on it: I use a tool where I draw a plan in the context of the garden, and mark up sun angles through the year, views etc - then use that to think about how light comes in, shadows etc. I'm a great fan of exposing yourself to many houses via estate agents or weekend stays. eg Modern houses owned by the Landmark Trust. Ferdinand

I'm going to post this highly informative video again. It might surprise some people.

Not exactly. Old walls internal humidity can vary significantly season to season, related directly to the RH of the ambient air, internally and externally. Invariably, in any house in a damp climate without air conditioning, the internal humidity will map the outside, even a passive house. An old wall ( brick lime stone etc) , as long as it can stay dry, can have a good contribution to the overall insulative value of the total build-up as long as there isn't any cavities or thermal bypass. https://www.historicenvironment.scot/archives-and-research/publications/publication/?publicationId=7fc3d5f6-5992-4106-92bf-a59400bf430c However if the wall becomes damp (kept cold and cannot dry) the internal moisture builds up leading to degradation of the structure and a much poorer overall U-Value. http://www.tara.tcd.ie/bitstream/handle/2262/79420/CERI draft RW SP final.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y @nod Suggesting gypliner I'd be concerned about how to deal with the breach of the continuous thermal and vapour envelope at floor joists and abutting walls. These would be very tricky to seal 100% and most of your buildup would be still gypsum. With low vapour permeability my fear is that you could end up restricting any moisture movements in the house out through the joist ends and abutting walls leading to rot. Nice explanation from Tomás here.

Best practise guidance now recommends against using moisture closed insulation systems on retrofit iwi. Where it is used, a ventilated cavity is recommended. If you're going to below u-value of 0.30 then you have to have a good look at cold bridging, not just interstitial condensation and moisture. If you were to go with a moisture open insulation you can fix this directly to the wall, not worry about your vcl, just air barrier. Government guidance here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1019707/iwi-guidance.pdf

Internal insulation is risky. You will have a permanently colder brick structure which in turn will result in higher moisture levels within the wall, heightening your chances of decay and frost damage. You need to take every precaution to ensure that moisture can make its way out of the wall as easily as possible. Choosing a vapour closed internal insulant like PIR risks entirely sealing one side of the wall, halving your potential drying routes. Furthermore the vapour barrier cannot be continuous (unless you cut back the floor joists and internal walls). With vapour barrier penetrations at the end of every joist, the timbers ends sitting outside the heated envelope right at the most lightly point to receive damp air from inside, you're asking for trouble. A safer approach would be to use a very vapour open internal insulant and wall finish.

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Christ it's like summoning Beetlejuice. The mere mention of a tight butt and he appears 😱

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Is the house in Ealing, and is it owned by a young lady.